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<h2>Tutorial 6: Planets</h2> 
By Sean Luke
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[Requires Java3D]&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[<a href="tutorial6.html">Tutorial 6</a> documentation]
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<p>Some planetary orbits, primarily to introduce the 3D graphics facility and 3D continuous field.  The orbits are totally ridiculous: they're circles rather than ellipses; they're all on the same plane; and they're at the log of the proper distance so the planets can actually be seen.

<p>This tutorial portrays the planets using planetary texture maps provided, with permission by James Hastings-Trew at <a href="http://planetpixelemporium.com/">JHT's Planet Pixel Emporium</a>.  The Earth texture map is from <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/">NASA</a>.  Java3D is not particularly fast at loading these texture maps: you have to be patient.

<p>The demo is good place for you to try rotation, translation, and scaling of the 3D environment.  You drag in various ways:

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<li>Left mouse button: Rotate the environment.
<li>Middle mouse button or alt/option-left-mouse: Move the camera towards or away from the environment.
<li>Right mouse button or command-left-mouse: Translate the environment (move it side to side).
<li>Scale Text Field: change the magnification. This one is particularly useful in this context.
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<p><hr><font color='red'>Note:</font> this description is different from the one which appears after following the tutorial documentation.  This is because the tutorial documentation overrides the <tt>getInfo</tt> method to provide a description.  If this method is not overridden, MASON instead tries to display a file called <tt>index.html</tt> stored in the same directory as the simulation (which is what's going on here). 


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